Sunday, January 16, 2005

While perusing the sites of my fellow bloggers, I came across this little tidbit on the Conservadiva (http://conservadiva.blogspot.com/) blog. A Fox poll taken last December reveals that 66% of Americans pray at least once a day while 11% admit to drinking at least once a day. More Hail Marys than Bloody Marys? Based upon my own heavily biased point of view, I should be surprised by this but after thinking about this for just a second, I found that I really was not. By nature, I would not at all consider myself a religious man but I have to say in all honesty that drinking does bring out the ecclesiastic piety in me. In fact, I initiate all of my truly colossal benders with a drinker’s prayer:

Our father, who art in heaven,
Protect us from great pain.
When our drinking’s done,
And the bouncers come,
Please let them be forgiving.
Keep us this night from bein’ beaten dead,
And save our drunk asses,
As you smite cellmates who try to molest us,
Keep us from long incarceration,
With sexually twisted people.*
Amen.

*Unless of course, through some sort of clerical error, we are mistakenly sent to a women’s correctional facility in which case you can disregard all of the above while we write up beaming prayers of thanksgiving in between acting out our basest lesbian dungeon fantasies.

The serious reveler does not just use prayer as a preventative measure either. Right in the midst of the celebration, when the situation is at the precipice of becoming a headlining story on the eleven o’clock news, the discerning drinker will also seek divine intervention at key moments. He may pray that he does not become reacquainted with the buck-toothed, bug-eyed, beer-bellied bondage bimbo that lured him to her den of debauchery the last time he visited that particular establishment. He may pray that the luscious blonde at the end of the bar is smashed enough to give him her real phone number this time. He may pray, while barreling towards the county line at speeds that would make an Andretti lose bladder control, that the officers pursuing him rank just below Amish schoolgirls in firearms proficiency. While he is at it, he may also throw one in to ask God for a presiding judge with an extraordinary sense of humor.

Then there is post-bender prayer. That is one uttered on Sunday morning while sitting in a pew with the stench of stale tequila oozing out of your pores while the preacher unmistakably directs his sermon towards your section of the church as you consider plundering the passing collection plate to replace that portion of your earnings that is now sitting in a safe at your bondsman’s office. That one usually begins with: